The Organ of Sensation in Psychology: Exploratory Research

I use the term Exploratory Research as a synonym for exploration, phenomenology, and detective work. It is a building of facts, questions, and theories from the bottom-up, which is to say it is driven by an unbiased attention to the details of the data. The exploration of structural elements across a series of my own dreams was inspired by the 1997 film Contact (based on the novel by the late astronomer Carl Sagan). I was particularly enmeshed in the attempt of decryption experts in the film to find the "primer" that made it possible to make sense of the data hidden in audio and visual carriers of a signal from Vega. "The key to understanding the message is hidden in the message itself." The primer was part of the data, so understanding the data required a re-organization of its own elements with little recourse to outside sources. I find the architecture of such a message (as well as that of the process by which it is discovered) to be a thing of beauty. The message is understood on its own terms, its purity and integrity the only imperatives constraining the exploration. Some of my critics think I want to get rid of all the rules when, in actuality, I take great pleasure in the challenge of obeying the rules inherent in the nature of the subject itself. Such a principle is paid lip service in Psychology by those with a distaste for theory. They speak of a data-driven science in which facts are uncontaminated by confounding variables including the theoretical orientation of the scientist. But what they don't seem to understand is that their willingness and ability to maintain a close and comprehensive relationship with the phenomena is constrained by superfluous requirements (i.e., professional and technical pork) in their brand of "science." Their paradigms are hidden in their own plurality, but make no mistake, there is a meta-method at work here, prototypical policies and procedures that behave like prejudices, distancing the scientist from the object of study by discriminating against certain elements of the phenomena and certain elements in the psychology of the individual investigator. The scientists in Psychology like to sift through method sections with a fine tooth comb, eagerly waiting to point the finger at evidence of "selection bias" and other elements that suggest the study may not have been "random and representative." But in keeping with their usual inability to see the big picture, they fail to grasp that a violation of these standards is inherent in their method as a whole, and that their fetish for accuracy and parsimony results in research that is woefully inadequate. It's like getting so close to the wart as to be unable to see that it adorns the face of rabid gorilla.

Thus the work of the exploratory researchers is flexible and diverse. True detective work unfolds descriptively from the facts of the subject itself. Each subject places unique demands on our skills and ideas and the people best suited to its exploration are those whose personality has an intrinsic connection to it. Exploratory research as I have outlined it here will probably be criticized for having fundamental flaws ranging from being "arbitrary" to "aristocratic." But I think it places the value where it belongs, on the object (i.e., phenomena) and source (i.e., investigator) of science, and that the only arbitrary and aristocratic elements are those superfluous policies and mechanisms (those middle-men) in between. And the psyche of the individual investigator is a viable component of this, more so in Psychology, where the subject is ourselves, than in any other science. Some people are born to study certain phenomena. There is a meshing or marriage of personality with subject and to take the subject away from these people and to place it in the hands of those who preach science for its own sake is to cut ourselves off from the phenomena, or alternatively, to dehumanize the phenomena. This is most obvious in the study of dreams, and the result is that dreams have been de-psychologized. I am amazed by how willing we are all to accept all this in the name of science. The popular assumption is that if this is the product of science, then it must be valid. I would make an alternative assumption. If this does not seem to speak to the facts of my individual psychology, if the account no longer seems to belong to the phenomena itself, then it cannot be valid.

The Organ of Thinking in Psychology: Confirmatory Research

Confirmatory research is that aspect of scientific research with which Science is most synonymous and on which psychological inquiry is predicated. It refers to the impeccable, formally unassailable, application of experimental design principles to data and their subsequent analysis through statistics. There is a synechdoche at work here (i.e., synechdoche is a poetry term used to refer to the practice of using a part to symbolize the whole in a poem [e.g., rose garden symbolizes White House]) in which Psychology is distorted by its exclusive reliance on confirmatory research and from having confirmatory researchers as its professors. The problem is that we worship at the alter of a methodology applied with the sole purpose of making no official mistakes. The fact we worship at the altar of methodology warrants the use of the term "methodolatry." The tradition of null hypothesis testing pares down an interesting question (and a universe of information) to a dichotomous (yes/no, either/or) proposition (fail to reject/reject). The breadth and depth of the information gathering process is restricted to what is necessary to produce an inferential statistic on our career timetable, one that is likely to be positive and publication-friendly or that is likely to negatively reinforce our own fears of an irrational order. Descriptive statistics and a class of analyses known as "exploratory data analyses" are seldom used, as are other original and plausible adaptations of statistics. Nothing is explored. And the myopic or rigid conventions for the use of statistical analyses in Psychology are jealously guarded because psychology professors often lack the understanding of statistics required to attack or defend other variations or adaptations. At the end of the day, psychological researchers view their phenomena from standing position because they are unable to bend at the waist or knee caps. (This is probably an excellent metaphor for the view of the electroencephalagraph as the most legitimate method in the study of dreams). The fact is that the best way to understand anything is to tag its elements with numbers and observe the relationships mathematically. But how we assign and track those numbers is anything but a given and to rely on conventional formulations as a guide to how to design one's own inquiry without deferring to the depth of one's own questions or consulting the details of the phenomena itself is dishonest. In psychology, the mindless importation of an independent arbiter like statistics as a tool for understanding phenomena often goes the grain of a hidden mathematics that is intrinsic to the phenomena under study. This is especially true when we are dealing with a natural phenomena like dreaming. Because we choose the correct statistical analysis from those available and get all the calculations correct, we fail to understand how things might be different if we could see beyond the edge of our own sandbox. Contributions from other functions (namely theory and exploration) are required in doling out numbers or in deciding how those numbers are to be determined. Otherwise we may end up drawing conclusions that are technically correct within the wrong universe. Until we wake up and smell the dead squirrel rotting in the trunk of our car, we will continue to behave as if we can speak perfectly fluent Bengali in Oklahoma.

The Organ of Feeling in Psychology: Clinical Psychology

I will not say too much about this except that it refers to the service aspect of Psychology. Many practitioners think of themselves as doctors or mental health delivery professionals who treat persons with mental health disorders, but this is actually a narrow characterization of the broad function. Ministers of the feeling function are counselors capable of advising persons along a broad range of interests, including (a) stress coping/grief counseling, (b) skill remediation, (c) social education, and (d) personal growth and self-understanding (e.g., the optimization of skills, the realization of potentials, and the pursuit of happiness). The role of psychology's feeling function has been narrowed by many factors, including managed care and the unwillingness/inability of persons to shell out for these luxury items. But the restriction of the feeling function should not have been permitted to cause a commensurate restriction in psychologistic education. Clinical training has been increasingly geared toward psychopathology and, beyond that, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association, and this has adversely affected both an understanding of the psyche. Clearly, we've cut off our nose to spite our face.

The Organ of Intuition in Psychology: Theory

This would be the most controversial aspect of Psychology if there were more professors disposed to theory. Theory here refers both to an understanding of a formal and often-reified school of thought (e.g. Freud's psychoanalysis), but it also refers to the creation of new theory through contemplation and reflection. A theory is a framework for the organization of new data that was itself drawn constructively from experience and imagination. If the theory itself is useful, then research designed specifically to test the validity of the theory (i.e., theory-centered) is valuable. I have often been put in situations where a statistics professor would require I perform a principal component factor analsysis on questionnaire data and then force me to abandon the categories dictated by my theory to match the inelegant and useful categories vaguely suggested by the "factors." If I use statistics to test the validity of the theory itself, I would often find a good, albeit imperfect measure of support for it. But rather than get an opportunity to tweak the theory or consider its implications for a particular sample, I am compelled to abort it. This was an instance in which the exploratory research function was permitted to run amuck (or at least this is how I would have characterized it if I were permitted to use questionnaires less nomothetically). With the absence of theory today (and our contempt for everything irrefutable, non-parsimonious, hermeneutical, and 'armchair'), professors themselves encourage their students to confound theory with hypothesis, resulting in an ADHD science composed of highly circumscribed and frivolous mini-studies.

Other Professional Trappings That Would Have to Fall

Pre-Publication Peer Review

A more provocative position I've never declared. My adversaries love to exploit this position, lifting a soundbite from this statement to hoist on a flagpole. All to depict me as indifferent to the kind of standards that protect our water from contamination. My adversaries would have you believe that what they do is rocket science or brain surgery, but in actuality, the vast majority of talk therapy is NOT even constructed out of any psychological research (i.e., science), nor is it evaluated against research. Why? Because our science isn't there yet. Some would have you believe it is a matter of time, but I think our science is too crude an instrument to yield knowledge in the units of sensitivity, relevance, and usefulness that can inform therapy or even conversational discourse. Why? So-called "standards" like peer review. Why should I submit to the institutional safeguards and standards for a science of human nature when these arbitrary institutional inventions actually sabotage by enslavement the science of human nature?

There is an unwritten rule that an author of research can submit his or her work for consideration to only trade journal at a time. Since failing to publish at least once a year spells career death to non-tenured and aspiring psych profs, and since authors typically wait 4-6 months for a ruling on the submission, you can imagine the pressure (in pounds per square inch) on each author to design risk-averse research likely to produce support for his or her highly circumscribed and frivolous hypothesis. It may not be theater, but it is most definitely caricature. The social and material context of psychological research, namely career considerations, is contaminating the integrity of the science. Now to reduce the spamming of our so-called organized body of knowledge (our "literature") with junk science, why not allow researchers to submit to more than one journal at a time. Cap it at 3 if you like, but let's have trade journals (i.e. publishers) compete for authors rather than authors compete for publishers. The model is not without its flaws, but at least it will save our science. Upon receiving word their paper was accepted by a trade publication, authors sign a contract with the publication and then promptly requestss the other two trade journals withdraw the article from consideration.

Whenever we speak of peer review, and for that matter, committees of any kind, we are talking about a trade off. The benefits of peer review (and other institutional norms) reaped by most fields of scientific endeavor do not pay dividends for a science of human nature. In fact, the liabilities of peer review (and again other institutional norms) that normally hamper fields of scientific endeavor are amplified in the human sciences. Take groupthink for example. It is bad enough you have to make adjustments to appeal to the lowest common denominator of committee members. It's a second cousin to censorship, really. But then there are three forces which prompt or pressure Psychology's communities to refine, and by that I mean narrowly define, their standards. Power and expediency.

Legitimacy. Psychologists apprehend at various levels that psychology, both as a health delivery system and as a science, has not kept pace. Psychology is young. Psychology is also the only science in which the subject and object of science is the same. Within psychology, there is nothing to curb the proliferation of pet theories not only among pscyhologists but among laypersons with access to the subject material (i.e., themselves). By increasing the apparent potency of the standards, psychologists hope to first project a public impression that they belong among the ranks of doctors and scientists and second to restrict this expertise and authority to a certain class of "professionals."

Competition. Whenever a committee presides over a competitive application process, whether its admission to graduate school, appointment to faculty, or publication, the applicants are encouraged not only to appeal to the lowest common denominator of a committee, but to pander to it better than the other applicants. Over time, submissions to journals acquire a superfluous formal aspect and those applicants willing or able to demonstrate the greatest fidelity to the standards, are rewarded with positions of influence in the field. So committees grow accustomed to an escalating standard and the committees become populated by those who satisfied and exceeded those standards (i.e., who wears the epistemology of the field like a fashion runway model). And if you've ever seen some of those fashion shows, you know that most of this high art never reaches the street. Similarly, the contest itself to become a member of the academic and professional communities has conditioned them to lose touch with human nature.

Expediency. Search committees rely heavily on the current system of certification management to decide which applicants to put on the short list for tenure-track faculty positions. Undergraduate admissions offices rely similarly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and other standardized tests for a quick-and-dirty method of separating applicants. The developer of the SAT, Princeton-based Educational Testing Service (ETS) admitted its SAT does not have remarkable utility in predicting success in college, with its most valid scale (the verbal scale) accounting for only 16% of the variance in academic performance at the college level. But up until recently it was the college admissions offices who clamored for the standardized test, for which a difference in 200 points between any two applicants means roughly a difference in 3-4 correct answers. Since the California State School System recently decided it will not rely on the standardized test for admission decisions, ETS announced it will make sweeping changes to its test. The academic communities need to rethink peer review.

Legitimacy and competition shape the "standards" in much the same way alcohol increases the potency of a medication.

This is out of place in Psychology precisely because Psychology is a young and human science in desperate need of the kind of spark that produces serendipity and discovery. But we've built a flame-retardant culture in which no spark can flame. By this I mean our standards have become so stingy as to deprive researchers of the degrees of freedom they would be allocated even under other sciences. Our standards have created a culture in which we all seek to think convergently rather than independently. This depives us of another type of fidelity that is actually more critical to our success as psychologists: our faithfulness to our own wits and to the raw phenomena under study. Between our wits and this phenomena there must be a direct relationship, but our Psychology have attempted to broker this relationship and further distance the researcher from the phenomenon, all with institutional norms that we are supposed to mistake for true scientific standards. I will spare you here the list of these norms, but suffice it to say that peer review is one of them. Where we are talking about an exploration of the human condition, we need fluid, flexible, broad exploratory research by divergent thinkers. And peer review spells career death to such individuals.

I once entertained a criticism that if the collective did not rule, that each researcher would be conducting his or her own scientific enterprise such that there would be a 'Bill Science,' a 'James Science,' and a 'Debra Science.' Within the very broad and generous framework that is the scientific method, why should our research decisions not reflect our personal preferences. In other words, as long as the word science is in there somewhere (i.e., as long as 'Bill' and 'James' and 'Debra' are still doing 'science'), then why should they be denied? Why should the personal preferences of one peer reviewer prevail over that of a contributor? Perhaps the system would be less egregious if we were permitted to submit to more than one journal at a time. But holding us to one journal, keeping us waiting 4-9 months for a response, is an additional inducement to conform (to imitate the work of others and to seek out these collective expectations) so as to maximize our chances of success, because failing to publish once a year could spell career death. Outside academia, authors are permitted to submit to as many publishers as they like simultaneously. Perhaps if we changed the system so journals competed with one another for the works of researchers rather than the researchers competing with one another for space in a journal, then our science would move forward.

I suggest a two-tier solution, not unlike the book review piece of Amazon.com. If we are willing to confer a doctorate on a person, then that person is permitted to publish into the database and then individual scientists (and yes, perhaps even committees) can post their reviews of the research. Under this system, only problematic research will be flagged and perhaps even pulled. But everything else that is acceptable (i.e., that meets minimum essential requirements and that does not violate any one of a list of criterial problems) will be available. As it stands right now, there are winners and losers in publishing and this need not be the case. It does not serve science. It only serves logistical constraints and perhaps some gatekeeping or lilly-guilding function. After all, it is convenient in helping selection committees decide among job applicants. If someone has published 12 times, clearly that person has no problem "fitting in," whereas someone else with the same number of years opportunity may have only published 3 times.

I cannot defend the current system. What is published may be acceptable, but there is a lot of research -- good research -- on the outside looking in and there is a lot of potential research that is never conceived or executed because it does not perfectly fit the mold. Now I never said you will not find a diversity of TOPICS literature, only a diversity in METHODS, PRESENTATIONS, and IDEAS. That being said, there are still some subjects that are grossly under-represented due to the fact they do not lend themselves as readily to the institutional norms. Unfortunately, many of these phenomena are what people think of when they think 'psychology.'

I just know I'll be raked over the coals for this one, as my adversaries will seek to exploit my position on peer review, lifting a soundbite from this essay and hoisting it on a flag. But it is difficult to deny that original ideas and less-than-popular research interests make it difficult for an author to appeal to the lowest common denominator of an editorial review committee. Why not create an online database of publications? A PhD is necessary and sufficient for publication. Action against an author/publication is withheld pending complaints about methodological flaws that (a) cannot be construed as liberties with strategic benefits, and/or (b) that cast doubt on the validity of conclusions as written. In even many egregious cases, a work can be salvaged by throwing a disclaimer in the discussion section qualifying or stipulating conclusions. The matter could always be referred to a committee for a hearing.

I mean, what is really the harm? This is not pharmaceutical research or evaluation of space shuttle components. Such research does not belong in Psychology. By pretending there is something at stake, we are denying ourselves a rare opportunity to attack our subject. We have a potential to bring together the best of science and humanities in one discipline. But as long as this false or inflated prestige surrounding publications and publication standards facilitates admission, appointment, and tenure review decisions, Psychology will continue to defy the technology that enables us to make all our research available.

Psychology's Executive Systems Dysfunction

If we examine Psychology's branch structure, we get a clear sense of Psychology as a Life Science, a Social Science, and a Cognitive Science. I leave to you, the reader, to select the appropriate metaphor from among the array of choices like riderless horse, headless horseman, and headless horse. It's wide open. The curious absence of anything phenomenological from the arbitrary division of Psychology into these cosmetic fiefdoms makes any meaningful statements about the whole person unlikely. If we consider the , facts indigenous to any one of these jurisdictions, or if we consider the scientific findings of its feudal lords, we realize that neither these facts nor these findings are unmitigated by facts from one of the other jurisdictions. There is widespread agreement among psych profs that biological, social, and cognitive realities have a way of influencing one another. However, despite the lip service to the so-called biopsychosocial model and the generalist curriculum by which graduate students are trained, achievement in research for which psych profs are rewarded with publications and jobs is largely defined by the purity (rather than the multidisciplinarity) of the research. The research regarded as the most sophisticated is that which is purely physiological, purely social, and purely cognitive, and psych profs learn to think within artifactual models of reality translated in its own dialect. This means that psych profs are effective when making statements of a technical nature about highly circumscribed realities, capable of demonstrating not so much a pinpoint accuracy as an accuracy about a reality the size and significance of a pinpoint. Outside this point are a series of concentric circles, the increasing diameter spans realities about which they are incapable of making statements of any meaning or accuracy, realities which they are right to neglect given their vantage point lest they risk distortion.

If we insist on this kind of division of labor, we fragment not only the object of our research, the individual person, but also the agent of the research itself, the individual researcher. Our so-called organized body of knowledge then becomes a tale of the blind leading the blind, which begs the question: what does it mean to say that our body of knowledge is 'organized'? As a child, I often fudged bedroom inspection by throwing at a moment's notice all my pants into my pants drawer, my shirts into my shirts drawer, and my socks into my socks drawer. There may not be a person on earth who is not efficient at knowing his shirts from his shorts, but this does not mean that he knows how to dress himself (i.e. what shirt goes with what shorts). Similarly, psych profs seem preoccupied with what belongs in what drawer, and when I was required to declare a division as an applicant for graduate studies, I was often denied admission on the grounds that my interest in dreams struck a prof reviewing my file as belonging to something (anything) other than his or her division. I was frequently advised to apply elsewhere or admonished for having selected the wrong division. "If only you had applied [for] Developmental," one prof might say. Strangely enough, no one seemed to have the same opinion on the classification of my interest in dreams. I heard everything from from "I don't know, Cognitive?" to "Clinical" to "Physiological" to "Personality-Oriented." Oddly enough, I ended up getting my Ph.D. in the only division not to have been recommended: Social Psychology. And believe me, you won't get far post-doctorally in Social Psychology with a dissertation on dreaming.

So our arbitrary and divisive branch structure is bad for the health of Psychology. Holistic research cannot survive if applicants to graduate schools cannot earn admission because their interests are too large to be a prototypical leaf on a branch. By replacing such a structure with a division of labor grounded in a natural bifurcation of Exploratory Research, Confirmatory Research, Theory, and Clinical, we capitalize on the strengths of our members. One less appealing alternative would be to bandaid the existing branch structure by adding to it what is missing: a Phenomenological branch, wherein profs design research to address matters of meaning or else function as Integrationists to organize research across Cognitive, Physiological, and Social divisions. The latter would be less effective given the missing emergent property. Like any system, the human being is a whole greater than the sum of its parts, and the allocation of human functions across these divisions is life-ending surgery that is ill-fated to the post-mortem study of inanimate or artificial organs, warranting a diagnosis similar to Executive Systems Dysfunction.

The solution to Psychology's disorganization may be governance. Psychology has no central authority. There are no stockholders. No board. No cabinet. And while one might assume that the individual and a market of free ideas would flourish given this state of affairs, the fact of the matter is that what we have in the way of government in Psychology's academic communities is nothing short of communism. In the coming months, I will draft a proposal outlining my recommendations for a system of governance and for a Bill of Rights that seeks to reinstate the freedoms and dispositions of individual researchers.

Grant Appeal

Let's replace the current policy of encouraging applicants to procure external sources of funding with a policy favoring those armed only with their wits and curiosities. Grants are hardly appropriate (hey, I have found a use for that term) for psychology. We do not need funding for truly psychologistic research. Granted (not pun intended), there is some psychological research of value that required funding, but the field would be much better off if we discouraged rather than rewarded this form of prostitution. Since most fundable research is not psychologistic, those who perform psychologistic research are at a marked disadvantage for tenure. Over time, the face of psychology departments is transformed by granting agencies. We hardly know enough about personality today to notice its disappearance. Meanwhile, the Human Factors branch is emerging in universities across the country at the rate of Starbucks to tell us how to build a better spatula.

Textbooks

The most small-minded of my adversaries have this penchant for citing textbooks and quoting what their 'authors' have to say about science and psychology. At this point, it is incumbent upon me to remind such a person that Psychology, as an institution, consists of two machinations, or machines. The first and larger of the two machines, is the one that maintains the status quo, that keeps the proverbial "mainstream" flowing. The textbook is one product of this machine. But even the mainstream has an upstream and a downstream, and the textbook, like most of the other trappings discussed in this section, is unmistakably and shamelessly downstream, which is not an inherently destructive or corrupting fact, except where it is intended as an end run around the upstream (as confirmatory research is an end run around exploratory research). The purpose of the textbook is two-fold: (a) provide a canon that represents that portion of our knowledge base that is relatively consensual (i.e., the common denominator of the field) and (b) socialize students and new members into the field's academic and professional culture. This machine powers a massive framework of expectations designed to (a) facilitate communication and integration, (b) minimize friction and disharmony among members while fostering solidarity, and (c) managing a persona of legitimacy for a public audience. As an institution, psychological science is required to function within a social and material context and much of its make-up is socially constituted, which is to say, grounded in social expedience and necessity rather than on true science and nature.

Then there is the small matter of the 'other machine.' This machine consists of the works or teachings of those who seek to remind us of all the social impurities in our scientific medal, of all the thorny intellectual and philosophical issues that the main machine paints over. This represents the critical tradition of the field or that part of the field where researchers play it loose with the field's proscriptive and prescriptive boundaries.

In many institutions, these two machines can work together in a system of checks and balances (i.e., a complementary or self-correcting relationship). In psychology, however, those who reside in the critical municipality are not considered part of metropolitan Psychology, so to speak, and given the choice of either swimming in the mainstream or against a major career current. There is a prejudicial attitude against the small machine, and those willing to plug themselves into it are read the riot act and required to take their machine and find an alternate power source. (They will not share an outlet, not even by an extension cord). This is exemplified by a response I recently received in which an adversary flamboyantly proclaimed that "Science is about finding flaws." How frustrated will he be to learn I did not acquiesce to his coup de gras? "Yes and no," I replied. Science is not like you, and you are at this time all about denouncing me as flawed. Science is not so judgmental. Science is about the search for truth. As such, it is as much a tool of exploration as it is a tool of skepticism. Like many psychologists, you seem to want to embrace its latter aspect at the expense of the former. This is one-sided and counterproductive to discovery. A scholarly scientist exhibits a healthy balance of open-mindedness and skepticism. You have to reach out to the truth. You can't find the truth by chipping away at a block of falsehood in search of "what's left" because you won't know when you find it. You won't know when to stop. And you won't stop, until you are left with nothing, at which point you will call for another block of marble and begin again."